RehaBennettating Bill

American culture often places an exaggerated emphasis on
"breaking news" when what's really needed to cope with crucial
circumstances is a longer outlook.
Stories pop up on the horizon, receive five minutes' analysis
from media hacks and tame "independent" commentators. A party-line
is generated to distort the facts so that they serve established
interests, and the story is disposed of as quickly as possible,
usually within days, sometimes within hours.
The fact is, the trade that most needs a 15-day waiting period is
probably journalism.
Such was the case recently, when former Reagan Secretary of
Education and "drug czar" William Bennett -- the Book of Virtues
guy Rush Limbaugh used to squander so much of his time (and ours)
toadying to -- saw fit to publicly attack Republican Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich for sucking up to Jesse Jackson.
Doubtless you remember the event.
Republican Congressman J.C. Watts, a black conservative, given
the task of officially answering Bill Clinton's State of the Union
address for his party, used the opportunity -- quite appropriately --
to address one of the country's most egregious blights,
"race-hustling poverty pimps". (Before you get too excited, never
forget that this guy is a typical Republican, with a typical
Republican's moral integrity and intestinal fortitude: he apologized
the next day.)
Gingrich (who, driven by some freshly-discovered species of
pusillanimity that established a new record even for Republicans, had
invited Jackson to sit with him during the address) felt called upon
to tender his sincerest regrets to the Rainbow Demagogue for Watts'
indisputably truthful and highly cogent remarks.
Although the congressman named no names, everybody knew who he
was talking about.
Gingrich's gratuitous expression of regret would certainly have
been bad enough.
His disintegration and collapse as a national figure of respect
has been dismaying -- almost physically painful to witness -- even to
his political opponents.
At least to those among them -- unlike such creatures as David
Bonior and Richard Gephart -- who can truthfully lay claim to some
trace of honesty and decency.
Even worse -- and somehow more vicariously embarrassing -- was
this feeble attempt on Bennett's part to rehabilitate himself with
conservatives for the cretinous and cowardly position he took last
year on California's Proposition 187.
In what would turn out to be a miniature preview of Bob Dole's
milk-toast presidential campaign -- and undoubtedly what we can all
expect when the same gaggle of fumbledummies attempt to shove Jack
Kemp down our throats in 2000 -- both Bennett and Kemp took a stand
against an extremely popular measure that (had it not been
interfered with by California's Marxist courts) would have gone a
long way toward solving many social and political problems of the
last couple of decades, by denying certain social services -- welfare
-- to illegal immigrants.
The "explanation" is that, given their grand design for 2000,
Bennett and Kemp didn't want to alienate massive numbers of Hispanic
voters in southern California.
And Bill accused Newt of sucking up to Jesse Jackson?
The result of all this flap was a continued erosion of everyone's
regard for the Republican Party which not only fails to say what it
really means very often, but whenever it does -- apparently by
accident -- immediately takes it back.
Who are these Republicans, anyway?
They always claim to stand up for individual rights, but I can't
think of a single individual right they've reliably stood up for over
the past five decades.
They let Democrats -- like Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson
-- start bloody, stupid, purposeless wars which they then feel
perversely obligated to defend.
They blather about "law and order" all the time, but you'll never
see them lift even a pinky finger to enforce the highest law of the
land, the Bill or Rights.
Republicans are the "Rent-a-Wreck" of the American political
game, not the Avis or even Budget to the Democrats' Hertz; they don't
even bother to try harder.
Now look, Bill, you can trust me.
I'm gonna assume there's somebody in the Republican party with
a remnant of intelligence, courage, and morality, and I'm going to
pretend that it's you.
Believe me, I have absolutely nothing but your best interests
uppermost among my thoughts, and because of that, I have some items
of advice to offer you.
If you really want to win back the hearts and minds of
conservatives, then apologize publicly -- and abjectly -- for ever
having proposed gun control of any kind (there are some of us out
here who remember that putting political pressure on our
semiautomatic weapons was your idea) and demand its immediate repeal.
Do what you should have done as "drug czar": call for an abrupt
end to the War on Drugs, and all of its supporting and related
legislation, like RICO.
Do what you ought to have done as Secretary of Education:
emancipate millions of kids and parents by calling for a total
separation of school and state.
Commit yourself to eradicating every last trace of socialism from
American life.
You can finish up by pledging yourself, wholly and without
reservation, to stringent -- no, I guess we'd better make that
"draconian" -- Bill of Rights enforcement.
Then buy yourself a can of dog-treats and try to teach the same
tricks to Jack.

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